Includes the seminal "Early History of Negro Minstrelsy," by Col. T. Allston Brown, together with pen-and-ink portraits of the major minstrels, and a comprehensive index.
The minstrel show occupies a complex and controversial space in the history of American popular culture. Today considered a shameful relic of America's racist past, it nonetheless offered many black performers of the 19th and early 20th centuries their only opportunity to succeed in a white-dominated entertainment world, where white performers in blackface had by the 1830s established minstrelsy as an enduringly popular national art form. This book traces the often overlooked history of the "modern" minstrel show through the advent of 20th century mass media--when stars like Al Jolson, Bing Crosby and Mickey Rooney continued a long tradition of affecting black music, dance and theatrical styles for mainly white audiences--to its abrupt end in the 1950s. A companion two-CD reissue of recordings discussed in the book is available from Archeophone Records at www.archeophone.com.
The first full-length study of Frederick Douglass' visit to Scotland in 1846Frederick Douglass (1818-95) was not the only fugitive from American slavery to visit Scotland before the Civil War, but he was the best known and his impact was far-reaching. This book shows that addressing crowded halls from Ayr to Aberdeen, he gained the confidence, mastered the skills and fashioned the distinctive voice that transformed him as a campaigner. It tells how Douglass challenged the Free Church over its ties with the Southern plantocracy; how he exploited his knowledge of Walter Scott and Robert Burns to brilliant effect; and how he asserted control over his own image at a time when racial science and blackface minstrel shows were beginning to shape his audiences' perceptions. He arrived as a subordinate envoy of white abolitionists, legally still enslaved. He returned home as a free man ready to embark on a new stage of his career, as editor and proprietor of his own newspaper and a leader in his own right.Key Features:First full-length study of Frederick Douglass' visit to Scotland in 1846Reveals fresh information about, and deepens our understanding of, a major 19th-century intellectual at a crucial stage in his political and professional developmentSubjects Douglass' speeches and letters to close readings and situates them in the immediate context of their delivery and compositionDemonstrates the extent to which Douglass was closely acquainted with Scottish literature, history and current affairsEnhances our knowledge of Douglass as a performer, his ability to read audiences, and how he moved and influenced them
"A big juicy wedge of jazz history. . . . Lots of wonderful stories." -- Los Angeles Daily News "Kansas City was a hub for Jazz bands that crisscrossed the country in the 1930s. . . . The interviews go beyond jazz into the infamous political machinery that made Kansas City a wide-open and corrupt town where jazz could flourish." -- Choice "A wealth of stories, a good measure of entertainment and a valuable stab at history -- not to mention some great pictures." -- The Kansas City Star
William L. Slout, entertainment historian par excellence, here provides five fascinating essays on the development of the American traveling circus in the post-Civil War era: "En Route to the Great Eastern Circus" (on the creation of this great show); "The Great Eastern Circus of 1872" (more details about one of P. T. Barnum's rivals); "The Not-So-Great Trans-Atlantic Circus and Menagerie" (how a show failed suddenly in a yellow fever epidemic); "What Goes Up...Comes Down" (how balloning became part of the circus environment); and "The Chicken or the Egg?" (on the first development of the double-ring act pioneered by Barnum and others). These vivid essays, highlighted by numerous contemporaneous excerpts from local newspapers, help bring a long-forgotten era alive again.
William L. Slout, circus historian par excellence, here provides six essays on the development of the American circus. "From Rags to Ricketts: The Roots of Circus in Early Gotham" looks at the beginnings of circus entertainment in old New York City during the eighteenth century. "The Great Roman Hippodrome of 1874: P. T. Barnum's 'Crowning Effort'" describes the great showman's grand experiment: the collection and display in the Big Apple of the "largest collection of living wild animals in the world." "The Recycling of the Dan Rice Paris Pavilion Circus" tells the story of an American circus entrepreneur who took his traveling show to Europe in 1867. "Strange Bedfellows: The Pogey O'Brien Interval, 1874-1875" relates how O'Brien partnered with P. T. Barnum to take the circus master's show on the road while Barnum was creating his "Great Roman Hippodrome." "Two Rings and a Hippodrome Track" demonstrates that the first two-ring circus mounted by Barnum (or anyone else) occurred in 1873, and not 1872, as previously supposed. Finally, "The Adventures of James M. Nixon, Forgotten Impresario," describes the career of a major circus manager who worked between the 1843-75, directly competing with Barnum for the same audience--and eventually losing the struggle. Slout’s vivid accounts, highlighted by contemporaneous newspaper accounts of the excitement generated locally by these traveling shows, help bring a long-forgotten era alive again.
The stories within its pages will attract not only social and political historians, but feminists, jazz fans, academics interested in African American cultural interchange, and general readers fascinated by the cast of characters who played and danced to the music, despite warnings from the pulpit that degenerate youth were destined for hell and damnation. Freedom Music will enable readers to learn of an innovative side of Wales previously hidden from history. The music appealed to Wales’ vibrant youth, and those not part of the mainstream culture of chapels, choirs and male voice choirs. This study highlights gender, misogyny and discrimination within jazz music in Wales. This studies focuses on the history of African American music in Wales, Welsh women’s contribution to jazz in Wales. Cultural innovation by women entrepreneurs during and from the First World War.
Exploring the disability history of slavery Time and again, antebellum Americans justified slavery and white supremacy by linking blackness to disability, defectiveness, and dependency. Jenifer L. Barclay examines the ubiquitous narratives that depicted black people with disabilities as pitiable, monstrous, or comical, narratives used not only to defend slavery but argue against it. As she shows, this relationship between ableism and racism impacted racial identities during the antebellum period and played an overlooked role in shaping American history afterward. Barclay also illuminates the everyday lives of the ten percent of enslaved people who lived with disabilities. Devalued by slaveholders as unsound and therefore worthless, these individuals nonetheless carved out an unusual autonomy. Their roles as caregivers, healers, and keepers of memory made them esteemed within their own communities and celebrated figures in song and folklore. Prescient in its analysis and rich in detail, The Mark of Slavery is a powerful addition to the intertwined histories of disability, slavery, and race.
The Peculiar Afterlife of Slavery explores how antiblack racism lived on through the figure of the Chinese worker in US literature after emancipation. Drawing out the connections between this liminal figure and the formal aesthetics of blackface minstrelsy in literature of the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction eras, Caroline H. Yang reveals the ways antiblackness structured US cultural production during a crucial moment of reconstructing and re-narrating US empire after the Civil War. Examining texts by major American writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Sui Sin Far, and Charles Chesnutt—Yang traces the intertwined histories of blackface minstrelsy and Chinese labor. Her bold rereading of these authors' contradictory positions on race and labor sees the figure of the Chinese worker as both hiding and making visible the legacy of slavery and antiblackness. Ultimately, The Peculiar Afterlife of Slavery shows how the Chinese worker manifests the inextricable links between US literature, slavery, and empire, as well as the indispensable role of antiblackness as a cultural form in the United States.